Madness

Hey you. Don’t read that. Read this...

Come to Think of It

AGarBlog is a much better title than LeftWingZionist. That is merely my opinion, as the writer and creator; but I do not agree with this opinion as the marketer and publisher. For the benefit of search engine optimization, LeftWingZionist is a three headed monster craving attention while drenched in the blood of the masses. As the marketer, I feel confident that the overzealous shall be reached knowing full well a more subdued, deeper thinking crowd is the target. As the publisher, I would remind myself as the writer that it might be a great idea to actually bring in some Left Wing thought as well as an essay or two about the Zionism. Not that I want to be a pushy editor, because I know the trouble that I am having as a writer, but let’s get real about Israel, hombre.

AGarBlog was the short-lived predecessor to this here fandangled techno-writing. I wrote about my business. I wrote about my neighbors. I wrote about my dog dying. Nothing terribly different than now, really, except back then I had a digital camera and included my own photos rather than steal imagery off the internet. For educational purposes, I would incorporate links to the text which would then open new windows. I would also consistently use Crazy Capitalization for stylistic purposes. Ontop of this, I disengaged the 4th wall between myself and the readers by addressing ya’ll as You, and giving You the nickname of the 15 of You or You 15. Now, it turns out, my shtick is more customized for the internet, an identity designed as a potential, hot-shot, political asshole blogger who suppresses freedom and thought of not only the poorest, most pitiful Palestinians, but of the lowest hanging, and swinging, Tea Bagging fruit as well. A wily victim-maker, ready to stick it to America by calling for nationalized health care while also supporting Israel’s right to defend herself from the constant, Arab aggression that eventually bombs other people to make a point. Listen, Hitler was a vegetarian, but Gaza doesn’t even come close to either Johannesburg or the Warsaw Ghetto.

But do You really want to read my perspective on that? In essence, the point of my blogging is to keep myself writing. Or, actually, to simply get myself writing. I am desperate to maintain a discipline of sitting at the desk and jotting thoughts down to be consumed by a reading public. And I don’t think You expect much out of me except Peace, Love, Harmony and other forms of Crazy Capitalization. Coherence will be good to add, as well as some sweet alliteration to keep the narrative flowing with hidden games and messages. There are images in my head that I need to get out. Purple rhinos that dance in tutus.

I have checked into it, and I can change the name of my blog is to create another page. As if that’s a big deal, but You know what? I’m not real interested. AGarBlog is the nickname of LeftWingZionist, and if You want to use it, You may. Nothings changed. I’m still trying to get some writing done.

I Know What It Is I Can Do

I was brushing my teeth, and looking in the mirror, and thinking about how We’re All Winners, especially those guys who generally considered loveless, and jobless, and, in essence, lifeless, when I thought, Heck, now’s the time to write a post about depression. Because it’s one constant theme in my life are that the people who don’t understand the deep, dark holes of painful, circular logic (think of the razor ball in Phantasm drilling into your brain combined with final thoughts of failure and self-inflicted torture) is that they tend to say, So why don’t you start writing about your depression?

That's What I'm Talking About, Except Messier

Why? I rhetorically ask back and give them my answer: Because it sure sounds like a shit load of fun listening to somebody talk about how much he hates his life.

Depression is knowing my dog is going to die.

Depression is looking at my mother’s last photograph with me and it was taken by the man who murdered her.

Depression is getting fat and bald and still eating ice cream on the couch as the cute, troubled red head solves a murder mystery.

Depression isn’t fear. Fear is based on the unknown. Depression is based on what is happening right now combined with a large helping of what had happened in the past. Fear is being afraid to walk in the kitchen in the middle of the night because of the large, Texas sized cockroaches that hang out by the sink scraping food off of dirty dishes, or scurrying across a cupboard door, or in and around the bowl of dog food. That’s fear, and it’s for pussies. This is depression, and those who really get depressed aren’t worried about a fear. We already know that life, which is based on the current and past, fucking sucks. That it’s going to blow chunks and suck major league donkey dicks whether I’ve got 10 inch roaches or not.

Whoo fucking ass de-fucking-pression.

Catch the fever.

Update:

I no longer have my job at [ACME]*Inc. I still have my magnetized name tag which gets me into the building and all the parking lots, though, because my former supervisor said that I am welcome back if the work calls for me. The bad news about not working is that I need the money to buy food for me and the dog so that we can eat, but all in all, I have yet to wake up in the morning sad that I no longer hop in my car with a sack lunch and my canteen so that I can stare at product numbers, UPC codes, and item characterizations for eight hours in the day. Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t wake up sad, frustrated by the lack of purpose to this life. Which means, really, my emotions are pretty much in check from having my job cut; I just don’t have an activity to distract me from how I feel.

Update: I need to write. It is how I chose to communicate to the world as a child, and it is what I had wanted to do throughout my life… up until, that is, the last decade of painful writer’s block. Even now, in the middle of this paragraph, my thoughts wander as to whether Fred Jackson is going to score a touchdown for me against the Raiders since the Bills are in the Red Zone. Seriously, how fucked up is that? I live in Austin, can’t see the game from Buffalo, but I sure have got a second window open on my computer screen following team Las Moutafika make it through its second Sunday together. At the present moment (while checking the status of Mr. Jackson), I am deeply heartened by Dwayne Bowe’s better half of football than his entire game last week. I fuckin’ distracted. It’s ridiculous.

Update: Palestinian leadership is continuing their push through to become a recognized Arab state. Mazel Tov, I say, since they were offered not just a state in 2000 with 97% of the West Bank along with the remaining 3% of disputed land exchanged through swaps, but also in 2008, when Ehud Olmert upped the ante by including a part of East Jerusalem to be considered the proposed Palestinian nation capital. And it’s not that it’s necessarily funny that the Palestinian leadership at the times– Yasser Arafat in 2000 and Mahmoud Abbas in 2008– rejected these proposals that would have established a recognized, Palestinian Arab state, but that neither leader offered a counter-proposal, and instead, upped their own ante with the second Intifada and missile strikes from Gaza. Everyone agrees that the Palestinians need to make concessions in order to achieve a true, undeniable peace with Israel– that Israel be recognized as the Jewish state (as in, the Palestinian state being recognized as the Arab state); that the new Arab state of Palestine absorb their life-sentenced refugees as citizens, as opposed to forcing a “Right of Return” of Arabs into modern day Israel); and that the ’67 borders will serve only as a framework, and not as a definite absolute. But, to be honest, all of that is cute and all, but what really drives it all home is these three points of concessions are then used by Israel-bashers to explain Israeli intransigence.

(h/t Elder of Ziyon)

I Know the Problem

Oh... Archie

Which is a big part of the problem. As is complaining all the time about it. Especially since I know what’s going on, and that it bothers me.
Not a good beginning towards trying to rejuvenate a writer’s lifestyle which is supposedly simple. As a writer, you wake up, and you start writing. It might take a session of yoga followed by shower and some green tea to get to the task at hand, but the point is to get to the task at hand, which is writing. And, look, I just did it, proving that this isn’t very hard.
Yet it has been, and for a very long time. Over a decade (for real) of me sitting in front of a computer and choosing not to get some writing done. Maybe, I would say something as a Facebook status (for fuck’s sake), or get an email done if it was really necessary, but none of that really is writing. None of that is really helping me to make a difference with what I would like to see as my future career. A career that, when I was half my current age, I thought I would be in full swing by now. I had also thought that I would have a wife, child and family, which is another part of this problem, or so I continuously tell myself. If I had a purpose in my life, I wouldn’t be sitting in front of a computer smoking dope and staring at Facebook… or planning my fantasy football league team for hopeful Sunday victory… or, and really, let’s face it, this is the No. 1 source of distraction in my life, try to reason with a Western world’s view of what is actually happening in the Middle East with all of those Muslims and that group of crazy Jews.
That one takes up all my time.
But I am in need of admitting something important. That there is nothing I can do to help the process of finding peace in the Middle East, which to me centers around allowing Jews their sovereignty over their lives in the land that bore their faith. But, what I can do, is write a television sitcom made for cable, and that is what I’m going to do. Starting soon.

WYSIWYGing It

My cell has a camera, but 2005 called me up to say my phone was obsolete. I have no money for anything but my free with a subscription plan Sanyo Kyocera II, and I haven’t had a camera since Black Sunday 2008, the Sunday after Thanksgiving when I came home from work and saw someone did some Christmas shopping with my stuff.

My brain on HubbleSite.org.

If this was a real blog, I would have splatterd it with photos of Lopez. At least the image of him on the deck wearing the African beaded yarmulke from Ethiopia used as my Facebook avatar. (I attempted to import it to this blog, but it only comes up as a thumbnail.) Which means if this was a real blog, I would have the money to buy a camera so I can take extra photos of my dog in order to splatter his image all over my portal of the net.  And if I had the money for a real camera, you know I would have the money for a real computer.  One that doesn’t erase paragraphs as a sign that it’s a bit overheated.

It can’t be that hard, right? It’s not like I haven’t written before. It’s not like I don’t want to write again. It’s not like I wouldn’t trade my 40 hours in a cubicle at [ACME]*, Inc for the opportunity to utilize my narrative skills as a means to make money. It’s not like I didn’t come to this town 12 years ago with the objective of finishing a 4th and Final draft of what was supposed to be my first book. I didn’t get into a position like that without the discipline of repeatedly sitting down to write on a blank page or screen.

Explosions in Space

As they say in baseball, you don’t walk out of a slump.

My Dog Is Dying

Obviously, this is something dogs do. They stick around for awhile, and it’s simply not in the gameplan that they outlive you. Some of them don’t live very long, and in this regard I am lucky.  Abby, the dog I had when I got Lopez, i.e. The Sisterinator, was 13-years-old when she died. A corgi-shepherd mix, Abby died at the ripe age of 91, with a hip no longer useful for walking around.  Although the morning I put her to sleep, she did make it out the house and all the way to the back of the yard where I was digging her grave. She wagged her tail, and gave me a lick when I hugged her. I led her back and into the house where she waited and stayed.

Lopez is 11-years-old.  He is a much larger dog than Abby.  A tall, 120 pound, Rhodesian-shepherd mix, I tell folks that in a previous life, I charged kids a quarter per ride. Lopez also has hip issues– partly due to his shepherd mixed lineage– and it will be his inability to prop himself off the floor that signals the time I end his life.

I think about it because I want to be prepared, although I will miss work and have a real shitty next morning and probably rest of the week.  His height and weight propel his human age ratio to closer to 88 than 77, and a late-aged octogenarian is physically much different than a spry, old fart. Although, Lopez did get frisky this afternoon when I inadvertently blew smoke in his face. (It was an accident brought on by him, where I was waiting for the Dude to finish eating his food which he only began chowing down as soon as I grabbed the leash; and so I told him, I was going to smoke another bowl, and the next thing I know, he’s right up in my face waiting to get leashed up. I swear.) Next thing I know, he’s leaping into my torso, his weak and numb hind legs bearing his weight, and I lose wind.

Lopez el Dopez, mi amigo del grande.